By the way, the article says nothing of the sort. It's Erickson saying that the GOP will lose horrifically if they don't embrace the social conservatives FURTHER. The headline and initial paragraph is the premise he rejects.

Go start a local ISP right now. Take advantage of those fibers run directly to the consumers residence that they decide who gets to plug into them? Oh? They don't exist? Why don't you run some of your own to their homes then. What? Regulations don't allow it without an incredibly high barrier of expensive certifications, permits, and licenses? Well go get those. What? You're still not allowed because now all the other carriers are lobbying to make new laws to prevent it and suing on various shaky legal premises that shouldn't exist?

Yeah. Almost as hilarious as you thinking it's hilarious.

I can't right now. I'm too busy writing sub prime mortgages and selling them off to the banks. But hopefully in a few years my waste control business will be in full swing when the LP takes over congress. I plan to collect everyone used tires and car batteries for a small feel and dump them in a hole that's right above the water table.

If that doesn't work out, I'll start my sub par meat business. all meat personally inspected by earl of course. I'll make a ton by buying all the old product the local stares can't sell after awhile. a few injections of a "solution" and my beef will look pretty again and I can sell it for half price!

But then again....I'll have tons of competition....but that's what the market is all about! Thank god for forward thinking libertarians! down with regulations!

As a Lincoln Republican (wait, we still have those? Yes, Virginia, we do still have socially liberal republicans) living in Liberal Bastion Massachusetts who went out and helped with the Warren campaign and was (and still am) a Jon Huntsman supporter, I agree with the other Republicans here. The party is not what the party should be. We are no longer a party of fiscally conservative moderates to counter the fiscally liberal moderates of the Democratic party.

Our party is being strangled by the radical fringe because we let them, because we thought we needed that shot in the arm that a heroin junkie thinks they need that first time they try it. Rehab is gonna be tough and the shakes and chills and vomiting up will be brutal but we need to kick the habit of going to the radicals when we lose or we're never going to get back on course where moderates like me can really vote for anyone running under your flag in good conscience.

Look at Scott Brown. He ran originally as a moderate, independent Republican, then you stuck your claws in him and convinced him that not only should he take that first hit of Fringe-arific ecstasy, but you wouldn't let him go when he tried to run and you sucked him down the rabbit hole. Your guys had him go negative in atomic fashion when it first appeared that the people weren't buying what you were peddling anymore. So when the national republicans went nuclear, you made him go nuclear too. You dragged him down to your levels and it made him sickly in the eyes of his former supporters, and we saw just what we could have with Warren, a bright-eyed, bushy tailed professor who wanted to support the little guy, and we realized that we needed to help those that needed it instead of take a swig from the Randian hits you were doling out.

You called us ingrates for leaving you, but you know what. We were those abused housewives that finally said "fark you, we're gone" and packed up and left you for a better person. Are we sad we left you? In the back of our mind, we may miss you, we may hope you're doing well but mostly, we hope you're finally getting the help that you needed for so long that we just couldn't provide anymore. We wish you well but you need to change your tone if you ever hope to get people like us back.

Until then, we're gonna keep doinking the mailman that treated us with concern when he saw our bruises.

pecosdave:Of course neither the Democrats or Republicans want anything resembling instant run-off or any sort of reform, it reinforces their duopoly

However, the GOP looks to be on the edge of a demographic cliff, where they can either keep their political stance and lose voters, or shift their political stance and lose voters -- leaving the Democrats with a (near) monopoly. It might motivate them, if they can face reality.

I admit, it's unlikely. But, it seems the most viable way for the GOP to maintain significant levels of power. Contrariwise, since I'm to the left of the Democratic median on a lot of issues, I'm not too upset by the prospect of the political right coming crashing down.

Unfortunately, the Randite wing of the libertarians doesn't seem to recognize that.

Since you're a libertarian, you're probably disinclined to think of the left-right spectrum, anyway, preferring to think in two dimensions. If you haven't encountered it, you might find the two dimensions that the psychological metrics discussed in Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians" of interest. At the end, you might consider my conjecture that Libertarians appear to tend to be low-RWA, but high-SDO.

I'm not sure what the practical consequences are if I'm right, but it seems likely there would be some.

Like most modern economists, you're neglecting information costs; treating de minimus as de nihil is as sloppy as a spherical cow, or worse in some cases.

Gulper Eel:If you want to be persnickety and demand that marriage licenses be named something else because 'marriage' is a word that carries a religious context...okay, sure. That would be a good example of separating church from state the way it's supposed to be.

Except, you have to do that for all marriages, because some churches (like the Unitarian Universalists) are just fine with sanctifying gay marriages. Which a few folk are fine with; but more seem to want a "separate but equal" bit for "civil unions".

daveUSMC:I really want to find a reasonable nook of the internet where I can discuss conservative/small-libertarian ideas without being lumped in with Bachmann/Palin, and where I don't have to deal with the snark-fark patrol that writes off the entire idea of a GOP or conservatism and packa ...

Would that there be some actual Politicians that would vote or legislate this way. The "lumping" of the rational and irrational was done by the Republican party to achieve their permanent majority. Don't blame me for considering them (or anyone who self-identifies with them) as unified in their derp.

This. No party will ever have a monopoly on genius or stupidity. Discussion of ideas should be open, diverse, and honest. People should then decide. Admittedly mistakes will be made, but nothing that can't be learned from and fixed.

I point to the SW E1 "Phantom Menace" and US 2001-2008 as an example of what happens when you believe there is nothing to be learned from outside sources.

More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages came from private lending institutions in 2006[16] and share of subprime loans insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also decreased as the bubble got bigger (from a high of insuring 48 percent to insuring 24 percent of all subprime loans in 2006).[16] The Community Reinvestment Act also only affected one out of the top 25 subprime lenders.[16]

In 2008, Federal Reserve Governor Randall Kroszner, said the CRA wasn't to blame for the subprime mortgage crisis, stating that "first, only a small portion of subprime mortgage originations are related to the CRA. Second, CRA-related loans appear to perform comparably to other types of subprime loans. Taken together... we believe that the available evidence runs counter to the contention that the CRA contributed in any substantive way to the current mortgage crisis,". Only 6% of subprime loans were handed out by CRA-covered lenders to lower income people (the people the CRA is responsible for, CRA-covered banks can technically lend subprime loans to anyone).[17] Others, such as Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Sheila Bair,[18] and Ellen Seidman of the New America Foundation[19] also argue that the CRA was not to blame for the crisis.

pecosdave:While you're off selling stinky meat I'll make sure I buy all of mine from stores and distributors approved by the Safe Food Alliance. There will always be a place for cut rate crap like you sale, but the intelligent consumers will know not to buy from anywhere but an SFA butcher or possibly from someone they know and trust.

You're not going to have a lot of time to perform your butcher job as everyone who drinks water from the water table, for example, everyone, will be collectively suing your ass because pollution of the water table does infringe on the rights of others as understood as by the "do no harm to others" requirement to existing. Libertarian approved. Remember, we're not Anarchist, there's a big difference.

Go write all the sub-prime mortgages you like. When the loan recipients can't pay what are you going to do? We plan to eliminate the FED and the FDIC won't be there to bail your ass out. It looks to me like some people are going to get some very cheap houses out of the deal. You might be able to evict a few but eventually the courts are just going to call you an idiot for it.

Remember banks were ordered by the government to make those loans available to begin with.

The rotten meat I sell is certified by the Safer Food Alliance (which just so happens to be headquartered in the back room of my store). You can trust the Safer Food Alliance. Really . You can.

And that pollution in the water table isn't from my company. Good luck proving beyond a reasonable doubt in court that I am the source of that specific pollution.

"When you have a massive black turnout for Barack Obama, and he wins them by 90%, you need as many Christian evangelicals turning out to offset that for Mitt Romney. He needs to not take social conservatives for granted."

Evanglicals whose doctrine state that mormornism is a false religion voting for a mormon to offset black voters voting for a christian leader who happens to be black.

What the hell is beyond WHARRGARBLE? We've reached new record levels of derp.

That's some delusional shiat. Our regulatory system is weak due to decades of chipping away by "conservatives" and this has led to systemic crashes of our economy, but regulations are bad and only make things worse?

The problem with regulation is that somehow, we've decided that industry self-regulation is better and in the cases where we actually create government regulation, we stack the regulatory bodies with industry interests. fark that shiat.

Go start a local ISP right now. Take advantage of those fibers run directly to the consumers residence that they decide who gets to plug into them? Oh? They don't exist? Why don't you run some of your own to their homes then. What? Regulations don't allow it without an incredibly high barrier of expensive certifications, permits, and licenses? Well go get those. What? You're still not allowed because now all the other carriers are lobbying to make new laws to prevent it and suing on various shaky legal premises that shouldn't exist?

Yeah. Almost as hilarious as you thinking it's hilarious.

I can't right now. I'm too busy writing sub prime mortgages and selling them off to the banks. But hopefully in a few years my waste control business will be in full swing when the LP takes over congress. I plan to collect everyone used tires and car batteries for a small feel and dump them in a hole that's right above the water table.

If that doesn't work out, I'll start my sub par meat business. all meat personally inspected by earl of course. I'll make a ton by buying all the old product the local stares can't sell after awhile. a few injections of a "solution" and my beef will look pretty again and I can sell it for half price!

But then again....I'll have tons of competition....but that's what the market is all about! Thank god for forward thinking libertarians! down with regulations!

While you're off selling stinky meat I'll make sure I buy all of mine from stores and distributors approved by the Safe Food Alliance. There will always be a place for cut rate crap like you sale, but the intelligent consumers will know not to buy from anywhere but an SFA butcher or possibly from someone they know and trust.

You're not going to have a lot of time to perform your butcher job as everyone who drinks water from the water table, for example, everyone, will be collectively suing your ass because pollution of the water table does infringe on the rights of others as understood as by the "do no harm to others" requirement to existing. Libertarian approved. Remember, we're not Anarchist, there's a big difference.

Go write all the sub-prime mortgages you like. When the loan recipients can't pay what are you going to do? We plan to eliminate the FED and the FDIC won't be there to bail your ass out. It looks to me like some people are going to get some very cheap houses out of the deal. You might be able to evict a few but eventually the courts are just going to call you an idiot for it.

Aside from social issues. "Libertarain" is a code word for more power to corporations, less regulations for corporations, and more corporate control over our lives. Sounds nice on paper...but "libertarian" would allow mega monopolies. With only a few survicing corporations running wild...controling our employment, health care, internet, electricity, Firefighters, EMTS, etc..etc.

All without that pesky 'regulation' that says you have to treat people in the ER...or if you can't pay the bill the corporation could place you physically in a "Work Farm" until paid. HEY, with no regulation...why not? It's a 'work house' to pay off debt not a prison. Nothing in libertarianism would prevent that worst case Scifi situation. In fact we've had it before in Charles Dicken's London. Debtors' prison. Link

That's the ultimate outcome with 'libertarianism". Sounds good at first...yeah..Pot and no regs...until you know the 'no regs' applies to those corporation/people too.

dudemanbro:How about all "conservatives" fark off? They're all either selfish to the point of being destructive to the social fabric, all up in everybody else's business about how they run their lives, or forming little judgemental groups to make life difficult for those they don't like; consequently they should all fark off. Assholes.

You're not helping. At least you put conservatives in quotes because I don't think many Republicans are actually conservative anymore. Wanting less government interference in our lives does not make someone evil or selfish. Less governmental interference demands lower taxes and that the government be restricted to basic things like defense of the country and facilitating commerce. Those principles have been corrupted though. The "social" part of the "convservative" movement is neither social nor conservative. More things should be left to the states. Gay people should have the same rights to marriage as straight people. Those are actually true conservative values. The legality of marijuana should be left to the states.; We needed a Constitutional Amendment to ban alcohol, why shouldn't the same apply to marijuana? You know what happens when a Democrat gets into the White House? They crack down on marijuana. It happened under Clinton and it is still happening with Obama.

But one of the huge problems with politics today is the polarization. People like you are not very different from Tea baggers. You feel the other party is evil and should be stopped at all costs Much like them, you feel there is no room for compromise and the only solution is to somehow exterminate those who disagree with your views.

How about all "conservatives" fark off? They're all either selfish to the point of being destructive to the social fabric, all up in everybody else's business about how they run their lives, or forming little judgemental groups to make life difficult for those they don't like; consequently they should all fark off. Assholes.

"When you have a massive black turnout for Barack Obama, and he wins them by 90%, you need as many Christian evangelicals turning out to offset that for Mitt Romney. He needs to not take social conservatives for granted."

I actually think their dark-ages social polices go well with their magic-themed economic philosophy. If there were orcs and the GOP stayed away from governance, they could be entertaining.

See, you're casting a wide net over anyone who's got an R after their name. I have an R after mine, but I don't want to "lower taxes %20 across the board" or increase defense spending a dime.

Do I want to reduce the scale of government involvement, including addressing entitlement spending and some safety net programs? Sure. Do I want to take away poor people's food and money and shove them into the cold, making them swim through an alligator infested moat to compete for the right to live in government subsidized housing? No.

As far as I'm concerned though, Grover Norquist can go get intimately acquainted with a cactus, and Jerry Fallwell can go meet Ted Haggard in a truck stop.

somedude210:As a Lincoln Republican (wait, we still have those? Yes, Virginia, we do still have socially liberal republicans) living in Liberal Bastion Massachusetts who went out and helped with the Warren campaign and was (and still am) a Jon Huntsman supporter, I agree with the other Republicans here. The party is not what the party should be. We are no longer a party of fiscally conservative moderates to counter the fiscally liberal moderates of the Democratic party.

Oh yes, what a great guy John Huntsman is, totally reasonable. Let's eliminate capital gains and dividident taxes, lower corporate taxes by 12%, lower everyone else's taxes while we're at it, then end Health Care Reform and all the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. Also basically kill FEMA and the EPA. You know how we'll pay for it? Closing unspecified loopholes!

None of your Republican splinters have any good ideas, other than opposing SOPA. That is literally the list right now

Well good for you, but I see your subsequent posts are filled with a bunch of stuff about the "left wing" and how it just loves federal control over everything and the statement "You are my enemy" directed at another Farker.

I know it's super easy to buy into narratives like leftists-hate-freedom or whatever, but would you consider the possibility that many people who vote against Repubs aren't so much "leftist" as they are people who just want good government? It sounds like your group has a lot of ideas. Chances are good that many of them are intrinsically good ones. And if they are, you might discover that many of these people you're dismissing as totalitarian-minded commies would actually be natural allies, sometimes, who you could work with to achieve common goals. After the whole process is done with them your ideas probably won't be adopted verbatim -- and neither will theirs -- but the result could be something better than what we're all stuck with now.

It sounds like you're used to thinking in terms of categories and maybe doctrinal purity. But what do you really want in the end -- good, lean public policy that works a little better than what we have today? Or a He-Man Tyranny Haters' Club in a treehouse somewhere where you and your friends can sit around and biatch?

I can't tell you how many "conservatives" I talk to that know nothing about Goldwater and when I talk about his positions they laugh and say that its not conservatism. I weep for my party...

The intelligent conservative embraces Eisenhower and Goldwater (the version of Goldwater who recanted his issues with civil rights mind you). The mainstream party calls us RINOs for that ideology and just got a middle finger in return when we all voted for Centrist Obama.

/also it is amazing how many people seem to forget HW called Reagonomics "voodoo economics" and had to raise taxes to clean up the giant farking mess Saint Ronny made

See, here's the thing: This supposed dichotomy between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives does not really exist. The same people who think it's fair to tax super rich people at half the rate of everyone else are the same people who think you should be grateful for that rape baby that Jesus gave you. The GOP has done such a terrific job of melding social and fiscal issues into one big ideology that they can no longer be separated.

Take, for example, the issue of poverty. You'd think Christians would want to take care of the poor like Jesus instructed them to do, right? WRONG! Conservative Christians have figured out a way to rationalize their brutal fiscal policies in a way that, in their mind, doesn't conflict with their medieval religious ideas. Every now and then you'll come across someone who is very fiscally conservative but not religiously conservative, but those people are still complete assholes too (Ayn Rand anyone?). There is nothing morally defensible about fiscal conservatism or religious conservatism.

Read the article. Then read the comments. These people have learned NOTHING. I was listening to Diane Rehm yesterday - she had a bunch of bigwigs from Republican think tanks on. They've learned NOTHING. They just sat around saying "message, message message" when the problem has always, ALWAYS been "policy policy policy."

Wendy's Chili:somedude210: As a Lincoln Republican (wait, we still have those? Yes, Virginia, we do still have socially liberal republicans) living in Liberal Bastion Massachusetts who went out and helped with the Warren campaign and was (and still am) a Jon Huntsman supporter, I agree with the other Republicans here. The party is not what the party should be. We are no longer a party of fiscally conservative moderates to counter the fiscally liberal moderates of the Democratic party.

Lincoln was not what you would consider a "fiscal conservative". As soon as the South left congress, he pushed through a shiat-ton of railroad and education spending.

Modern Republicans, even the "socially liberal" ones, are not descendents of Lincoln. They are the descendents of unrepentent slavers like Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis. The opposition to a strong central government is and has always been about having access to cheap, politically powerless labor.

wow, aren't you a downer this early in the morning. Last I checked, being of an Irish background, I highly doubt my family are descended from slave owners. There are things the federal government should do and there are some things that they shouldn't do. Public health is something they should do, but the prohibition of some substances (pot, tobacco, alcohol) shouldn't be (and we're seeing that in Washington and Colorado), nor should the there be a federal law defining marriage, as it is not for the government to decide religious ceremony (everyone should be allowed to get the same benefits regardless of who they're with, as long as they're human)

to generalize modern "socially liberal" republicans as a throwback to slave owners is a dishonest generalization that has no place here.

What I find really interesting here is that, implicit in the social conservatives 'no compromise' mindset is an apparent belief that Americans will line up and follow if they are given a 'true' conservative option. They really seem to think this is the case.

somedude210:As a Lincoln Republican (wait, we still have those? Yes, Virginia, we do still have socially liberal republicans) living in Liberal Bastion Massachusetts who went out and helped with the Warren campaign and was (and still am) a Jon Huntsman supporter, I agree with the other Republicans here. The party is not what the party should be. We are no longer a party of fiscally conservative moderates to counter the fiscally liberal moderates of the Democratic party.

Five years ago I self-identified as a Republican too, but I thought they should get off this social nonsense that is none of the government's business. When they went nuclear and put party before country, they completely lost me. If the day ever comes when a moderate like Huntsman can run under the R ticket, I'll reconsider.

Considering how he was ostracized for daring to say he served under an American President, not a Democratic or Republican one, I doubt that day will come in my lifetime

According to Janet L. Yellen, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, independent mortgage companies made risky "high-priced loans" at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts; most CRA loans were responsibly made, and were not the higher-priced loans that have contributed to the current crisis.

Go start a local ISP right now. Take advantage of those fibers run directly to the consumers residence that they decide who gets to plug into them? Oh? They don't exist? Why don't you run some of your own to their homes then. What? Regulations don't allow it without an incredibly high barrier of expensive certifications, permits, and licenses? Well go get those. What? You're still not allowed because now all the other carriers are lobbying to make new laws to prevent it and suing on various shaky legal premises that shouldn't exist?

Aside from social issues. "Libertarain" is a code word for more power to corporations, less regulations for corporations, and more corporate control over our lives. Sounds nice on paper...but "libertarian" would allow mega monopolies. With only a few survicing corporations running wild...controling our employment, health care, internet, electricity, Firefighters, EMTS, etc..etc.

All without that pesky 'regulation' that says you have to treat people in the ER...or if you can't pay the bill the corporation could place you physically in a "Work Farm" until paid. HEY, with no regulation...why not? It's a 'work house' to pay off debt not a prison. Nothing in libertarianism would prevent that worst case Scifi situation. In fact we've had it before in Charles Dicken's London. Debtors' prison. Link

That's the ultimate outcome with 'libertarianism". Sounds good at first...yeah..Pot and no regs...until you know the 'no regs' applies to those corporation/people too.

You're one of those far left wingers attempting to sew visions of worst case scenarios and exaggerated outcomes we libertarians like to laugh at.

There's a balance to be achieved. Right now the pendulum is all the way over into corporatist zone, right now quite literally corporations are running the government, even if it is through puppetry, writing the laws and making sure they get enforced selectively to serve the corporate interest. Regulations are the tools they use to do this. Why else do you think there's regional monopolies and duopolies in the communications businesses? It's sure not technological, or even due to limited ability to have infrastructure, it's regulations preventing competition.

The saddest part is most people are blind to what's really happening. The Occupy Wall Street crowd? They were HELPING WALL STREET. Being in business when regulations get passed is the best place to be, it means your able to adapt and comply - not to mention help write the regulations making it very difficult for competition form.

You are my enemy. You are among those people trying to protect the power of the blended government/corporate body with the intent of preventing individual growth to protect the powers already in place.

Figure out an algorithm for redistricting to end the shenanigans there; make sure it's not racistly racist racism badly disguised in blackface, but a system which recognizes and addresses that longstanding problem. Go with some manner of alternate voting mechanism like concordet, instant run-off, or whatever, that might help third parties be viable. Figure out how to make voting fully auditable to cut out wholesale fraud, yet maintain the secret ballot, and still simple enough for high schoolers to learn; talk to the computer science folk for the algorithms there, too. You can probably get some manner of voter ID, if you're willing to make obtaining it an absolute right, although you'll have to deal with the religious right's terror of ID systems. Kill the electoral college; the South may no longer be as resistant, it was pretty popular the last time it came up, and it kind of fits the theme, helping the sale on the whole package. Make it all a package, and make it fair and protecting the rights of minority groups... because you may well be one, soon.

At that point, you can afford to cut loose the Tea Party and Values Voters, without risking absolute loss of political power. You'll almost certainly lose some power (or at least the presidency) for a decade, as the second party becomes two third parties, but you can start seducing the Do-It-Yourself Democrats back out of that tent so the Democrats fission, too; and probably get the Libertarian Party going along as well. (You may have to move under their brand name; TP and VV outnumber y'all.)

The hard part is there's going to be a big chunk of the GOP who will want to fake the reform, and actually try and jigger the system even more their way. You will need to make pariahs of anyone who attempts bad faith games. Make it clear that that way lies civil war, and the rest of you will not hesitate to put anyone up against the wall to prevent the revolution from coming, because they might well be there anyway.

Of course, someone actually in your party may have another cunning plan.

DamnYankees:The social conservatives are, as far as I can tell, the majority of the GOP.

Tea Party and Values Voters look to be just under half the potential electorate; possibly just over, by actual number of voters. More if you throw out RINO "Window Shoppers", less if you count the "Fark Independent" type of Disguised Republicans.